Re: Reviews - AMD Bulldozer FX-8150

This looks like a very positive move by AMD. If they continue to improve their product as they have done so, it only takes one stumble from Intel and they'll be back in there. I'm not going to get hung up on comparing vs Intel, because AMD are in the right ball park, and have released the first OctaCore porcessor which is competitive with i7 first gen, not SandyBridge.

I feel somewhat relieved with my 2 SandyCrack rigs now, but am eagerly looking forward to seeing how this pans out - after all, this is the first gen, and intels First Gen were the 860's and 920's - depends on how far down the line AMD are with their successor.

HEXUS: Please can we have some folding performance figures as well as overclocking?

This is the first in a line of CPU releases from AMD. While disappointing, the subsequent releases and their potential for overclocking could well give AMD an advantage in the non-extreme CPU market. I mean - a £100 chip that overclocks well could very well succeed in the market - please remember folks, that these are launch day prices, and that there is much more to come.... While the top of the pile may not trade blows quite as succesfully as some might like with Intels latest and greatest, there will be others and most of the Intel chips CANNOT be overclocked significantly....

Re: Reviews - AMD Bulldozer FX-8150

i can't stop picturing a stage with loads of fireworks and band music building up to a big reveal, only for the curtain to part and a loan man be stood there with a trumpet, who plays that wam-wooooowm sound of disappointment

it was kind of inevitable though, intel just have far too much experience and skill in building processors, while AMD have been doing the "even if it's broke let's not fix it" routine

Re: Reviews - AMD Bulldozer FX-8150

Good review, thanks Hexus.

It's an interesting chip, and I think only really the start of the story. In isolation it kind of reminds me of a massively threaded version of netburst - long pipeline enabling high clock speeds, and lots of cores. This is almost a chip designed to sell well on retail shelves where joe bloggs might go 'wow, this chip is faster and has more cores!!'. But just like netburst, it shows clockspeed isn't the important thing for actual performance and it's only clawing back some performance wins in highly multithreaded apps due to the large number of (sub)cores.

What this chip needs is a bolt on vector processing unit that will increase especially FP performance per clock/core.. with APU integration supposedly down the line we might just get that, though it'll be another feat of engineering to get it properly 'fused'...

Re: Reviews - AMD Bulldozer FX-8150

What a curate's egg. Let's not ignore the fact that, given the right workload, FX8150 can compete with Intel's 6-core 12-thread i7s at less than half the price. But then there's the other tests...

I really hope that AMD can find a way to use the IGP of future bulldozer-based CPUs to increase the FP throughput - otherwise they're going to have to something dramatic to the architecture to cover the obvious areas of weakness that exist. Wonder how much of an impact the rumoured pre-fetcher problems are having here...

Re: Reviews - AMD Bulldozer FX-8150

Ehh? You really thought they would take the performance crown?

It was always about value for money. Read some other reviews that aren't predominantly synthetic and you might see it ain't a bad cpu.

Hell, it seems to beat intel in BF3 tests as well as a few other games.....and that's on Win7.....Toms test shows that Win8 can give noticeable performance increases....which means a driver may do the same for Win7.

I still think this is going to be a great value CPU....especially once the non-black editions release.

Re: Reviews - AMD Bulldozer FX-8150

Originally Posted by j.o.s.h.1408

Looks like a wase from AMD. yet again Intel are still number one in terms of raw power and performance.

I give up hope that AMD will compete on the high end with intel.

Meh,I couldn't care if AMD competed at the high end which is irrelevant to 99% of us. Plus as mentioned by many reviews sites it will do much better in the server space which might explain why Cray and many national computing centres are changing over to them. Even the desktop workloads indicates it is only in highly multi-threaded workloads which Bulldozer does well in.

Sadly,it does not mean it helps the average user as much.

I want them to compete better in the sub £200 market which is where most consumers will spend there money.

Re: Reviews - AMD Bulldozer FX-8150

Originally Posted by CAT-THE-FIFTH

Meh,I couldn't care if AMD competed at the high end which is irrelevant to 99% of us. Plus as mentioned by many reviews sites it will do much better in the server space which might explain why Cray and many national computing centres are changing over to them. Even the desktop workloads indicates it is only in highly multi-threaded workloads which Bulldozer does well in.

Sadly,it does not mean it helps the average user as much.

I want them to compete better in the sub £200 market which is where most consumers will spend there money.

But in the sub £200 that is where IMO intel still have the performance crown buy a small margin. At the end of the day, SB has been otu for how long? and this is the best AMD can come up with? BD was rumored to come out months ago but it diddnt.

If you have a SB or even my old i7 920, what gains do u get from upgrading to a BD? none as far as i can see and THIS is the point i am making. what reasons do me and other i5/i7 of variations have on upgrading to this?

I can see that many in hexus already have some form of an i5/i7. IMO this was a let down. the reviews and figures dont lie lads. Read it. im not being a fanboy, I am reading what ha sbene posted by hexus and co

This 315mm2 chip is largely competing with Intels 216mm2 chip. They're both using the same sized process, so Intel's margins are likely to be somewhat higher already. Add in more die size for a graphics part and you've got more pain in that area.

Re: Reviews - AMD Bulldozer FX-8150

hmmm, shame really ... i love the idea of a true 8 core but the limitiation is that its essentially a similar version to HT on the i7, as they have to share the FP power it would have been EPIC if they could have had them actually seperate but unfortunately there are limitations on pricing and power efficiency. As it cant be as power efficient as i7 i think i will have to go with the 2600k, now to decide if i wait a week for pricing to settle or get one now.

Hexus, possibility of benchmarking with some Total War: Shogun 2? A real RTS to push the boundaries and directly applicable to me ofc !

Originally Posted by snootyjim

Trust me, go into any local club and shout "I've got dual Nehalem Xeons" and all of the girls will practically collapse on the spot at the thought of your e-penis

Re: Reviews - AMD Bulldozer FX-8150

Disappointing but somewhat expected due to design decisions. I am happy that they will do well in the server department but I can't justify spending money on the FX chips when they perform so badly in games.

It seems my upgrade will probably be to i5 based on the results posted in various reviews, unless I win the Hexus Competition